My company recently announced that it was shutting down one of our sister satellite locations. As a result, a few employees they wanted to keep were at my location getting set up so they could transfer over to our office. This required them to move as the satellite location was a couple of hours away.

One of the guys, who honestly was a delight to work with, asked me if I might be interested in hanging out more once he was settled in town. I gave him a noncommittal answer thinking it might be nice if we got to know each other better first. He smiled and said he understood, and we went about our work without any problems.

After his move, though, some very odd things happened. He became very distant, often skirting away from conversations or coming and going without much more than hellos and goodbyes. This was not just with me, but with everyone in the office, so I thought nothing much of it but I did find it odd since I thought he’d been trying to hit on me.

There were rude comments made about him, as well, when it became known that he’d tried to ask me out and I’d turned him down. I didn’t know the guy, though, so I couldn’t defend him, but they were all of the sort saying his behavior was that of a sociopath and that kind of thing.

I tried to pay no attention to it, but a week later, while I was working out at the gym a walk from my apartment, I saw him walk in and a thought went through my head. “How could someone so nice be stalking me?” And I realized that’s exactly what people think about sociopaths.

Frightened, I immediately got my stuff and went home, trying to make sure that I was not being followed. I felt relatively safe about it and tried to do things as normal, but later that night as I was taking out the trash, I found him standing at the corner across from my building staring at his phone and the panic set in. I immediately dropped the bag and ran inside and called the cops.

The cops came, knocked on my door, and talked to me. I told them everything about what had happened and they said they’d seen a man standing on the corner and would go talk to him. They came back in not too long and told me that there was nothing they could do to stop the man. Outraged, I ask if they’d stay while I confronted him as he was my coworker and I didn’t feel safe going to work if he was stalking me. They agreed and I went out and, without getting too close, loudly said his name.

He looked up and sputtered my name in surprise. Not wanting to give him a chance to say anything else, I shouted, rather more loudly than I meant to, “Why are you stalking me?” Panic came across his face, and he started sputtering about how he was not stalking me when I saw the lightbulb go off in his eyes. He turned toward my building, then toward the gym, then down to his phone, and then finally at the police, and he just started laughing.

As it turned out, by sheer chance, he had moved into the same apartment complex as me, albeit on the other side. Because of that and us working in the same place with identical hours, running into him at the gym was bound to happen. He was standing outside at the corner because, as he showed me on his phone, he was playing Pokemon Go and there was a gym there. Having never played, I never knew.

He had never even noticed me around, but acknowledged how it must have seemed. As for why he seemed distant all of a sudden? His cat had not taken well to the move or the new environment and he was worried about it. He was “distant” because he was trying to find time to call vets to get an appointment to bring him in ASAP.

The whole thing just kind of washed over after that. We had a good laugh and agreed to be friends and workout buddies. I did meet his cat shortly after this, and it did seem to be coming back from being worse for wear. I don’t know if I’ll ever really take him up on an actual date, but maybe if I can stop feeling so embarrassed by this, I might!

Every month, all the employees in my small office meet at a local restaurant to discuss business over lunch. We have an agreement with the restaurant that we preorder our meals several days in advance so that the food will be ready soon after we arrive. I am the person who collects the orders each month to send to the restaurant, and just about every month this happens.

Coworker: “This is not what I ordered!”

Server: “I am so sorry, ma’am. Are you not—”

The server reads my coworker’s name from the preorder sheet.

Coworker: “That’s me, but I didn’t order this! I wanted a chicken Caesar salad!”

I bring up the preorder sheet on the phone.

Me: “[Coworker], you ordered a quesadilla, remember? I have it right here.”

Coworker: “No, I didn’t. You wrote it down wrong! I’ll prove it!”

She starts scrolling through sent messages in her phone.

Server: “Would you like me to get you a salad, instead, ma’am? I can take this back.”

Coworker: “No, I guess it’s fine. It’s not what I ordered. But it’s fine. I guess I’ll just eat it…”

She continues scrolling and grumbling.

Coworker: “I can’t find the email, but I know this isn’t what I wanted.”

Server: “Are you sure you don’t want me to—”

Coworker:*Snaps* “No, no, I’ll eat it anyway. It’ll have to do.”

Me:*Mouthing to the server* “I’m so sorry.”

I pull up the original email on my phone.

Me: “[Coworker], here’s the exact email you sent to me. See? ‘I would like to order the quesadilla with a side of chips.’ But if you’ve changed your mind, the server can absolutely bring you something else.”

Coworker: “No, no, no. I didn’t write that! Maybe it was autocorrect. Or if I did, that’s not what I meant. You should know. But it’s here now and I’m not waiting anymore for food.”

Me:*To server* “Thank you so much for everything. We’re all set.”

The coworker will then continue to grumble for the rest of the meal about not getting what they wanted. Every. Single. Month!

([Coworker #1] and I have an ongoing game where we ask each other “would you rather” questions. Usually, we ask a question in passing and no one else is around. It starts off with “Would you rather live in the shirt pocket of a sweaty giant or in his shower drain?” and “Would you rather be a parasitic tick or a bloodsucking leech?”

It has progressed to weirder and weirder questions. Today we are sitting in the lunch room together and I don’t realise that [Coworker #2] has just walked into the room.)

Coworker #1: “Would you rather eat someone else’s eyes from their head or have your eyes gouged out with forks?”

Me:*answers* “Would you rather be shoved up someone else’s a** or have someone shoved up yours?”

I’m a fairly new office administrator for a pest control company and am still in-training. I work with two other admins who have been with the company for more than ten years, as well as the manager who has been around for more than twenty years. [Admin #1] has several adult children but is otherwise happy and healthy, [Admin #2] has a chronic health condition, and [Manager]’s wife has terminal cancer. This concludes my stage-setting for one of the worst phone calls of my life.

I’m happily snoozing away when I’m awoken by my phone. It’s [Admin #1]. I answer with the expected amount of attentive grogginess and am told something to the effect of:

“Sorry to wake you. [Manager]’s wife just died, [Admin #2] is in the hospital, and my son was just in a car accident. You need to come in… fifteen minutes ago.”

And that’s the first and worst time I solo’d running an office forty employees strong: through a trial-by-fire while my coworkers handled their life-altering events where they were most needed. No one had a good time that day, but I think I got off the easiest.

(I usually have good intuition. I have gotten a promotion at work, one that I’ve been working towards for three years, which is to start after I get back from a couple of weeks off. I get back and am welcomed to my new role by the store manager.)

Me: “So, who had the dummy spit about me getting this job?”

Store Manager:*looks at me in shock* “That’s weird for you to ask. [Coworker #1] threw a tantrum because she was expecting to go straight into it, because [Coworker #2] told her she would.”

Me: “But how is it [Coworker #2]’s role to decide? They’ve both only been here for three months.”

Store Manager: “I know, right? Anyway, just watch your back around her; I don’t trust her one bit. She’s got it in for you now.”

(I try to be extra nice to the coworker even though my intuition is telling me she’s a nasty piece of work. She’s joking with me one day, showing me some glasses that were left at the register. I try them on and ask how they look before putting them back. One day, I have the feeling that she’s going to try to report me for stealing. I mention the feeling I have to my department manager. She gets a bit upset telling me that she doesn’t think the coworker would do that. I apologise but tell her it’s just a feeling. But then, a week later.)

Department Manager: “[My Name], I need to talk to you about something that [Coworker] accused you of in front of [District Manager] and [Store Manager].”

Me: “What was it?”

Department Manager: “She accused you of stealing and I remembered what you told me.”

Me: “What? What was it I was supposed to have stolen?”

Department Manager: “The other day I saw her rushing to get out to a date or something and she picked up a hairbrush off the shelf, brushed her hair, and then dumped it back with the rest of the brushes. I hit the roof and yelled at her that she can’t just use stock whenever she feels like it because it’s stealing and it’s a hygiene issue. So, she reported me to [District Manager]. So, I also brought up the fact that she was taking reading glasses out of their packets for her own use at the counter. I kept taking them away, only to find she’d replaced them with another pair. I had 10 pairs put away, $150 worth.”

Me: “I thought she bought them.”

Department Manager: “No, she didn’t, but she told [District Manager] that it was you who took some of them.”

Me: *worried* “I tried on a pair once; I thought they were hers. What’s going to happen?”

Department Manager: “I know and [Store Manager] knows, too, that you didn’t take any. When [District Manager] started demanding to get you in, [Store Manager] told her that she trusts you implicitly and you would never do anything like this. Thankfully, she believed her; I’d hate to see you go through this. You will be glad to know that you don’t have to work with [Coworker] in this section anymore; she’s been moved to [other section].”

Me: “Oh, great!”

Department Manager: “Yeah, but I’m so angry because [District Manager] didn’t do anything to punish her. Instead, I got the punishment, much to [Coworker]’s delight. I have to go to counselling because I got angry at her and told her that using stock for her own use was stealing.”